News & Insights
Photo courtesy of: Greg Land
Ask the Expert is our monthly Q&A series where we sit down with leaders across B&D to explore emerging trends and best practices shaping the future of higher education. This month, we’re featuring Ellery Ammons, a Senior Associate in B&D’s higher education practice who specializes in campus and urban planning and change management. Drawing on her background in development advising and her ongoing graduate studies in urban and regional planning at Georgetown University, Ellery shares how universities can think more holistically about their physical assets: reimagining spaces not just as buildings, but as catalysts for community, connection, and long-term mission alignment.
EA: I’m originally from Memphis, and my love of urban planning really grew out of my love for my hometown and living in such a culturally rich and community-centered place. In college, I was involved in the revitalization of Crosstown Concourse, a 1.5 million square foot, long-abandoned Sears distribution center I’d seen vacant my whole life. Reimagining what it could become and then seeing it reopened as a thriving mixed-use ‘vertical urban village’ gave me a front seat to a transformative adaptive reuse project that showed me what’s possible when you honor a place’s history while giving it new life. From that project forward, I realized that urban planning was a field that brought together everything I care about: community, history, art, culture, and social impact, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it.
EA: Yes, a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) at Georgetown University. I’ve really enjoyed continuing to work in the field, while advancing my studies in urban planning. There is so much innovative work being done around the world in planning and development, and it has been incredible to learn from and connect with so many individuals and organizations engaged in solving such shared challenges. My degree is culminating in a capstone on social and civic infrastructure, and the value of managing a portfolio of assets as a network of urban amenities and third spaces in Greater Washington to build community & foster democratic resilience. Similar to my experience with the Crosstown Concourse, it has been a collision of numerous dimensions I love about people and place. Deepening my understanding of the problems (and potential solutions) of our generation makes me continuously excited by the role we play in making greater communities every day.
EA: As a Senior Associate at B&D, I work on planning projects and operational challenges for higher education institutions and municipal organizations. This includes everything from leading campus-edge mixed-use developments and campus repositionings, to managing stakeholder-rich processes and organizational change management projects. One thing I enjoy about B&D is that we aren’t just civil engineers, architects, management consultants, or project managers. Our mix of interdisciplinary backgrounds rounds out our expertise as development advisors who can see the whole picture, centering our clients’ institutional goals. This means there is no right answer for a design concept, governance and operations, or finances. It starts with first understanding who are clients are, who they want to be, the challenges or parameters informing a change, and then tailoring solutions that are thoughtful, effective, and efficient. I find that I really enjoy any project at the system-level. Whether it’s an entire urban campus or a 3,000-person organization, I love being able to work with internal and external stakeholders to define success, address key barriers, and collaboratively create and manage to desired outcomes. In a resource-constrained environment, collaboration and communication become even more critical, so we make sure our clients are not only optimizing their missions but are also working together to elevate the impact of their work.
EA: I used to work at a Business Improvement District (BID) in Memphis, called the Downtown Memphis Commission. There, I worked with a long list of property owners, residents, business owners, and other neighborhood groups on everything from $500 million mixed-use projects to comprehensive planning efforts and art installations in alleys. Cities are such beautifully complex entities that require a lot of consensus-building across a sea of varying priorities. A college or university is a microcosm of a city, with similar core functions mapped across its same footprint, but at a university, you have one table of decision makers. Since my background is in working from the city perspective, I understand the necessary balance of centering institutions and their context. Accordingly, I enjoy the external stakeholder engagement process as much as the internal strategic alignment. How is the city or county, or region better off because that campus exists? How is an institution a good neighbor? How is it either physically integrated or socially engaged? Campuses are proactively modeling what a strong community can look like, and since their decisions are seen and felt by so many people who have no affiliation with the school, one has to start with understanding their context to best enrich it.
EA: It’s easy for institutions to fall into analysis paralysis right now. Working in organizational change management, I can tell you, when resources get tight or the future is unknown, it can be easy for leadership to cut some of their most essential, “softer” functions that are always historically undervalued. This includes investment in collaborative channels, cultural initiatives, communication, or even change management. At B&D, we pride ourselves on being outcome-oriented. These cuts may appear to save time or money, but they also often come with negative results, in the short-term, long-term, or both. Another challenge is that when there is so much uncertainty, the fear of making the wrong move can be overwhelming, so people make the bigger risk of doing nothing. Progress comes from asking the right questions and making the next best decision, even if the full picture isn’t clear yet. Colleges should take a hard look at how they operate internally and how they show up externally. Who are your partners? Who could your partners be? Where are your relationships, and where should they grow? When institutions understand those dynamics, they’re stronger and more prepared to innovate. The future is moving fast, but it’s also full of opportunity. Don’t be afraid of it, accept it as a challenge to be better.
Thank you to Ellery for sharing her insights in this month’s Ask the Expert. If there’s a topic you’d like one of our specialists to weigh in on in a future column, we’d love to hear from you—submit your idea here.
